Manhunt - A Nihilistic Horror Masterpiece

foreign [Music] criticisms I receive as a YouTuber is that I read too much into things that I try to find deep meaning where sometimes there is no meaning at all some of you might be surprised to hear that I actually agree with that criticism there are no doubt one or two works of art that I've looked too much into but I try not to worry about having done so I would rather pursue meaning overzealously and inevitably make mistakes partly because the circumstances of my life have made this necessary I recall this one comment that I got about a year ago where somebody said something like this channel is one long existential crisis and I love it it's a very perceptive comment my channel is a constant struggle with the deepest despair-inducing philosophical questions because I've encountered a lot of them in my life without one and two my viewers and I have found that the proper way to respond to these questions is not to break down over their emotional difficulty but to seek out sustainable meaning wherever one can find it by making the pursuit of meaning one's default mode of operation you will be effectively if and perfectly shielded against the suffering of Life granted some might argue with great utility that the world is inherently meaningless borrowing from the nietzsian school of philosophy fair enough but even Nietzsche said that meaning would still have to be created ideally by individuals and not institutions otherwise living in a meaningless world where the only Surefire reality is pain and the only Escape is death well that's hell now there have been many depictions many versions of hell and fiction sometimes it's the semi-comical hell from Doom sometimes it's a more psychologically harrowing version of hell like in Silent Hill but these and most other depictions of Hell share in common though is that it can be overcome hell can be escaped but is there a depiction specifically in video games where hell is so pervasive and entrenched that no matter how hard you try it can't be overcome yes and you can find it in the 2003 video game Manhunt Manhunt depicts a world with no Heroes No Light No morality no meaning all that exists is inescapable suffering and violence these and other qualities for lack of a better word make manhunt's world the most accurate and realistic version of hell that you can encounter in a video game I think my argument is partially Justified due to the unparalleled amount of controversy this game and its sequel generated from the unparalleled brutality that occurs in this digital hell normally I and most people watching this video would not pay attention to controversy generated by a violent video game calls to ban a game because it supposedly encourages Gamers to murder almost always generates an eye roll from yours truly while my attitude remains consistent with a game like Manhunt this is one of the few games where I think my opposition has reasonable questions to ask even though I think their conclusions are wrong if you instinctually disagree with my desire to give the devil his due no pun intended consider the fact that some of the developers of Manhunt thought that even they were crossing a line with this game a former employee of Rockstar North the developer behind Manhunt said that there was almost a mutiny at the company because most of the employees at Rockstar Games wanted no part in it there was no way they could explain away that game there was no way to rationalize it according to him I think the former employee said this because it was difficult to discern an underlying ethical message or artistic context to justify the inclusion of such extreme violence though I would argue and will argue that there is a meaning and context for manhunt's violence I will agree that it's difficult to find but maybe that is the whole point Manhunt begins with a broadcast from a news station located in the fictional carcer city reportedly a death row inmate named James Earl cash was recently executed via lethal injection but that was just the official story the drug that cash was administered contained just a sedative cash awakens in a dark room upon hearing a voice speak to him via intercom the voice is that of a man named to Lionel Starkweather although at the beginning of the game he only refers to himself as the Director cash infers from Stark weather that he is someone with great influence enough that he was able to bribe the authorities in exchange for Cash's life Stark weather promises cash his freedom but at a price he has to hunt down and murder a series of gang members and cordoned off areas of Carson City these gang members represent the worst of society racists sadists pedophiles psychotic murderers all the while doing this Stark weather will be filming his actions via CCTV he does this in order to create a snuff film one of many that this director is famous for selling on the black market that is the basic premise of this game to repeat what I said a moment ago there are no heroes in this game virtually everybody including the main character cash is a pathetic excuse for a human being the only character that might approach virtue is the carcer city news journalist but even with her I have questions even though there is the promise of freedom from Stark weather why should the gamer help cash achieve this goal in the eyes of the legal system and the members of the general public who support the death penalty his life is forfeit on account of his crimes if cash were epical or remorseful he would refuse darkweather's offer and accept to death at his hands if the gamer prioritized an ethical response despite the fact that this response deals with the fictional World maybe arguably the moral action would be to not play the game at all but there are plenty of reasonable arguments against that stance let's take Mortal Kombat as an example that generated a great deal of controversy back in the day yet today it remains wonderfully violent and popular plus violent video games like Mortal Kombat arguably provide an outlet for those darker human urges ones that might have otherwise been acted upon in less legal ways I agree with these arguments completely but that said I don't think Mortal Kombat is entirely equivalent to Manhunt see mortal kombat's violence is portrayed in such a Fantastical way that it's obviously meant to be entertaining where Manhunt aims for realism that said maybe manhunt's excessive violence is used to shock consumers in order to illustrate a greater point maybe Manhunt makes an artistic statement on violence in the same way that spec Ops the Line did maybe the main character will engage in senseless violence only for the game to turn the mirror back on him and by proxy the gamer yet Manhunt does not do this unlike spec Ops the story of Manhunt does not guide the player to a moral resolution in fact Manhunt features no resolution of any sort not for cash not for the journalist not for the snuff film ring this makes the developers artistic intention unclear but the game like Manhunt one would think it'd be useful to weave in obvious artistic statement with the gratuitous violence if only to protect the game against censorship and ensure a profit but the developers did not do this it is furthest reason that I understand why some people would play a game like Manhunt and either not understand why it exists or feel outraged why should our society allow the promotion of a game that seems to only be a murder simulator we would discourage the widespread availability of a game that allows you to perform let's say other similar heinous acts on someone without narrative or artistic context so why not murder in my opinion I think the developers got away with this game because there actually is a discernible artistic purpose to the game even if it requires some effort to discover I will go even further and say that Manhunt makes a smarter artistic statement with its violence than most other violent works of fiction it goes back to two things that I referenced earlier on in this video one being the philosopher Nietzsche and the other being the concept of meaninglessness one word that I have heard reviewers use in regards to this game is that it's nihilistic meaning that there is no semblance of morality or meaning to be found in the game's World nihilism as a philosophical School predated Nietzsche but he is arguably the greatest proponent and Expositor of the doctrine repeating what I said before Nietzsche said that the instinctual response to nihilism is to create one's own values in the hopes of creating a morality that was beyond good and evil the problem is that human beings are not very good at creating their own values in a World's devoid of meaning worse yet the more that a human becomes corrupted by the suffering of Life the more likely those values become replaced with something darker though one could argue that it is possible to maintain a nietzschean morality I think it's hard to argue against the fact that there are multiple bad ways one will respond to a meaningless World be it in the world of Manhunt or our own world for example some will adopt an ethic where they simply survive in order to pursue Hedonism the pursuit of pleasure depending on how much a hedonistic individual suffers their Hedonism might become more perverted the prime example of this is with the previously mentioned Lionel Stark weather the director Stark weather was once a successful mainstream film director until his movies began to underperform at the box office this caused his career to be effectively finished his response to this setback was to move to cursor City and produce underground pornography under the banner Valiant video Enterprises he garnered so much success from this that he caught the attention of a mysterious criminal entrepreneur named Mr Nasty a man who was never mentioned in the game and only in the game's manual nasty's Financial power was so great that he Not only was able to finance starkweather's production of snuff films but even bribe the American legal system to set it up after this was done Stark weather sent assassins to kill those who ruined his old career even going so far as to film these murders in a video collection he entitled director's cut while that concept is terrifying on its own what is most Terror terrifying is that there are analogs to these characters and what they do in real life an unofficial yet fitting real-life analog to Stark weather is Harvey Weinstein but with his use of power in the film industry to take advantage of women and get away with it for a time even Mr Nasty might have a real-life analog though I was not able to verify this with a source there is a Wikipedia entry that states Mr Nasty allegedly was based off of a man named Tom Halloran who back in 1994 sold banned videos depicting fake killings to Children this was supposedly reported in the Tabloid newspaper News of the World with the headline Mr Nasty sells death videos to our kids this name was given because video nasty is a British colloquial term used to refer to these types of exploitative films given the fact that Rockstar North are based in the same country that news of the world has been Easton Britain maybe they took inspiration from that term and that incident the basic point that Manhunt is trying to make with these types of characters is that these types of people exist people who view morality as a hindrance in a meaningless world where the only thing that matters is a greater high in the form of money bodily pleasure Fame political gain Etc even if the cost is the exploitation and torture of other human beings though some might say that snuff films with Rich producers are a myth it is undeniable that videos exist that are filmed solely to depict these heinous acts so that people may use them to satisfy their perverted Hedonism Manhunt gives people the opportunity to temporarily immerse themselves in the keenest version of a nihilistic hedonistic World on top of that it allows you to be an active Expositor of the same doctrine that all the characters in that game game adopts reaping all the quote unquote benefits and deficits the main deficit as I said before is that nothing is resolved in a nihilistic World closer towards the end of the game cash finds out that participating in Stark weather's snuff film will not reward him with the freedom he craves rather Stark weather plans to conclude his film by having Cash die cash successfully seeks revenge for this deception by tracking Stark weather to his obnoxiously large mansion and slitting open his gut though I imagine cash and the gamer found temporary satisfaction in this the fact of the matter is that nothing really changes Mr Nasty still exists cash is still a man that was condemned to death row and even the journalist who exposes the snuff film ring does not go on to better things the events of the game cause her to suffer a psychological breakdown subsequently being committed to an mental hospital basically for all parties involved the suffering and Corruption not only continues but gets infinitely worse and more entrenched into the fabric of American society the horror of that reality is made greater depending on how much you feel this reflects America in real life where most other games would depict extreme violence but guide you to a moral conclusion Manhunt had the stones to not do that it let the gamer reflect on their own experience without any guidance the first question one might ask is was I entertained if you were let me be the first to say that that is okay for a stealth game from 2004 the mechanics hold up remarkably well provided you play on the PC though the stealth might not be as refined as Metal Gear Solid or as accurate as Splinter Cell the psychological thrill that this game offers is unparalleled it was especially thrilling back in the day for those who played on the original consoles and had a USB headset the game would output the sound of Stark weather's voice to the headset and the rest of the game's sound to your television speaker this obviously was done to further blur the line between the gamer and James Earl cash allowing yourself to live vicariously through the eyes of a murderer so that you might get some understanding of that horror is fine but what if the gamer that was blind to the horror and subtext and simply played the game to kill if you're one of the people who falls into that category then ask yourself how much different are you than say the character pigsy I ask this because pigsy was Cash's predecessor he like cash was a star in Stark weather's projects who over time succumbed to Savage behavior in response to this Stark weather had pixie locked away in his attic which he did I imagine out of fear of pigsy exposing the snuff film ring obviously pixie is not the type of person who can easily return to polite Society from his gross overweight appearance to his sadistic and aggressive cannibalism pigsy is the archetype of meaningless hedonistic violence he is so much the archetype that other games might have paid tribute to him Hotline Miami 2 not only features a story that also comments on the animalistic and violent side of human nature but also a character named Martin Brown he also has an obese build and wears a bloodied pig mask in Dead Rising 2 a boss named Randy tugman wears a pig suit and wields a large chainsaw like pixie if there is any message that I think Manhunt is trying to communicate it's that it is trying to make the gamer reflect on the violence they caused and how similar they might be to the archetype of human savagery if you played all the way through Manhunt then you the gamer willingly participated in the snuff film just as pixie did what does that say about you with the right amount of physical and psychological torture combined with the nihilistic and hedonistic attitude could you become like pixie the potential answer to that question I think not only makes Manhunt a horror Masterpiece but an important work of art it lets the gamer fall unconsciously into the world of karser city and kill unconsciously for entertainment the just as all the other psychopaths in this game by letting the game end with no resolution the gamer is forced out of their unconscious state so that they may Intuit some form of meaning this meaning once again is difficult to figure out and that's because the underlying meaning of Manhunt is paradoxical the meaning is that there is no meaning I like you might be able to deal with that fact by creating meaning but what about those who don't or can't what about the people in real life that have the same attitudes and behaviors as those in Manhunt remember those people exist and the terrifying truth is that given the right circumstances we could become like them no wonder people wanted to censor this game because some people can't handle the truth foreign

Channel: Max Derrat

Views: 225,633

Keywords: max derrat, manhunt, rockstar, piggsy, manhunt piggsy, manhunt analysis, max derrat manhunt, rockstar games, rockstar north, rockstar controversy

Id: cyo2_QV688Y

Length: 18min 58sec (1138 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 02 2022